"I like to think of myself as a rational person. Yes, I have emotions that muddle my choices, and I make mistakes on logic problems just like anyone else. But when I have big decisions to make in my life, I’d like to believe that I go with the facts.

Which is why the titular question makes me so uncomfortable.

(...) My dream was a high-variance profession. That means there were a few spectacular winners, a few more mediocre successes and tons of failures. Authors, musicians, actors, athletes and architects are other high-variance professions.The problem is that pursuing such high-risk professions is often hard to rationally justify. I’ll explain why this is so, but I’ll conclude by sharing why I think you can still have hope even if your dream is hard to achieve, and some high-variance pursuits that are well worth pursuing."

Top Presentation of the Day | There’s an old saying, ‘Power corrupts but PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.’ Well, don’t blame the tools, blame the workman. A good presentation can make the difference between winning a deal and wasting an afternoon in a meeting room. It’s worth doing it well. These tips and resources should help turn you into a presentation hero.

Why is it that American football uses eleven players, Canadian football twelve, and Gaelic fifteen? Why eleven in European soccer? Why does baseball field nine players, basketball five, volleyball six, water polo seven, and cricket eleven? Simple as these questions are, they are deceptively hard to answer. But whatever the historical reasons, the number of people on a team has significant impact on performance. Here's why.

The earliest known attempt to investigate the relation between team size and productivity dates back about a hundred years to the now famous experiments by French engineer, Maximilien Ringelmann. In a set of simple rope pulling experiments he discovered that, in what is now known as the Ringelmann Effect, people's efforts quickly diminish as team size increases. Eight people, he found, didn't even pull as hard as four individuals. He rationalized the decay in effort by suggesting it was difficult for team members to coordinate effort, and left it at that.

Robin Good: If you are interested in learning what the "reputation economy" is all about and why it will trump traditional approaches to marketing in the next few years, I highly recommend reading this Wired feature article.

In it you will find not only lots of good information on what measuring reputation really means, and how reputation may be used in the near future, but you will also get a shortlist of the key companies moving in this space and a simple ten-step reputation plan that you can use to start steering in the right direction.

Here a few excerpts from it:

"When asked for the sources upon which a user's trustworthiness is based, reputation startups list the usual suspects -- LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter -- but refuse to go further, saying that the algorithm is proprietary.

For these trust-validation services to become credible they're going to need to differentiate their products from those offered by companies such as PeerIndex, Kred and Klout, which collect digital information from different social-media sources.

Their metrics -- who I "follow", who "follows" me, who I know professionally, where I check in, what I chat about -- are measuring social influence, not reputation.

"Influence measures your ability to drag someone into action," says Joe Fernandez, cofounder of San Francisco-based Klout (wired 08.12). "Reputation is an indicator of whether a person is good or bad and, ultimately, are they trustworthy?"

"...reputation is largely contextual, so it's tricky to transport it to other situations. Sure, you might be an impeccable Airbnb host, but does that mean I would trust you with my car?"

"...Many of the ventures starting to make strides in the reputation economy are measuring different dimensions of reputation.

On Stack Overflow, for instance, reputation is a measure of knowledge; on Airbnb it's a measure of trust; on Wonga it's a measure of propensity to pay; on Klout and PeerIndex it's a measure of influence."

"The most basic level is verification of your true identity -- is this person a real person? Are they are who they say they are?

It's also foreseeable that data giving a good indicator of character, such as reliability and helpfulness, in one marketplace is a baseline of how you will behave in another marketplace.

Do we do what we say we are going to do? How well do we respect another person's property? Can we be trusted to pay on time?"

In reality, there is nothing “soft” about the skills needed to relate to people well enough to lead them. True leadership involves both hard skills and harder skills.

Leadership has its own set of occupational skills, such as the ability to synthesize data; the clarity to make timely and informed decisions; the capability to define priorities and goals; and the aptitude to see situations from a wide, organizational perspective.

On the behavioral side, leadership requires an exceedingly high degree of skill in working with and for others, holding others accountable to their commitments, and marshaling others to work together while following you into the future.

"The dreaded Krispy Kreme... (Photo credit: Wikipedia) What is it about self-control that makes it so difficult to rely on? Self-control is a skill we all possess (honest); yet we tend to give ourselves little credit for it."

...

"With this success/failure dichotomy in mind, I give you six strategies for self-control that come straight from new research conducted at Florida State University. Some are obvious, others counter intuitive, but all will help you eliminate those pesky failures and ensure your efforts to boost your willpower are successful enough to keep you headed in the right direction for achieving your goals."

Leaders lead others, but sometimes they don’t realize that the best leaders never stop improving themselves; they are passionate about learning and teaching, and their passion spreads to those who work around them.

It has been said that leaders are discovered, but really they are developed. Success is an ongoing process of improvement and adjustments.

There comes a time in most coaching conversations when people want to think about new ways to feel, behave, perform or think. The discussion usually arrives at a point when generating a range of possible solutions to the declared challenge is the right step to move to next.

In this mini-series I will help you through this really fascinating part of the coaching process in three simple parts:

Why generate a range of solutionsHow to help a client generate an effective range of solutionsWhat to do with the solutions once generated in order to get effective action

I have been involved in formally leading change in a wide variety of educational settings for the past 20 years and inevitably following a guest lecture, webinar or conference presentation I am asked to recommend a book or two or three on change. The following list is a response to those requests.

Tips on how to find your Calling, meaning, purpose and creative fulfillment -- in your life and work,...

"I am often asked to coach people on finding their calling and creating a vision. It’s a subject which often stirs up a lot of emotion, especially if you are dissatisfied with your life or career but don’t know what to do next. If this is your experience, chances are you are about to embark on a Hero’s Journey of Transformation."

"... Belief is contagious. It wins supporters. It’s self-fulfilling. As Harvard professor Rosebeth Moss Kanter shows in her book Confidence, the belief you can win creates momentum which improves your chances of winning.

So what do you do when you don’t believe?

Over the past four weeks, I’ve studied books and articles, interviewed entrepreneurs and experts, then assembled it all for you in a simple framework with which you can systematically attack whatever belief is holding you down. Give me 20 minutes. This works."

Read the complete article to release your anchors and set a new course.

The South Africans have a beautiful philosophy called Ubuntu, which translates as "I am what I am because of who we all are." This is a perfect way to think about the way a brain develops, influenced by its surrounding people and experiences.

"As a surfer, every time I get in the water it's a risk, every time I paddle for a wave it's a risk, and every time I catch wave it's a risk. Surfing is completely unpredictable, which keeps me constantly coming back for more. But there's a strong correlation between your success and your tolerance for risks in both the ocean and life - and both require the same approach and process"

To use the AIIM process in a sequential manner, you would typically start with analysis then bring in the imagination, then go back and forth between those two until you are ready to implement the solution or vision. After the solution is implemented, you continue modify in real time as you get more information and observe what is working and what is not.

The adage, “Don’t worry, be happy,” suddenly has a lot more weight behind it, thanks to the latest medical research. In the first-ever systematic review of happiness and heart health, researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston have found that a positive outlook on life can actually protect your heart from cardiovascular disease.

Denver — Clay Shirky is one of the country’s most prominent Internet thinkers—“a spiritual guide to the wired set,” as The Chronicle Review put it in a 2010 profile of him. In his latest book, Cognitive Surplus, the New York University professor argues that a flowering of creative production will arise as the

===> Internet turns people “from consumers to collaborators.” <===

Mr. Shirky also offered some advice to people interested in experimenting with openness: “Do not put together an interdisciplinary team from 12 departments and give them a budget of a quarter of a million dollars, and a year and a half deadline. Find five people and ask them what can you do in a month—for free. I think the results will surprise you.”

Sharing your scoops to your social media accounts is a must to distribute your curated content. Not only will it drive traffic and leads through your content, but it will help show your expertise with your followers.

Integrating your curated content to your website or blog will allow you to increase your website visitors’ engagement, boost SEO and acquire new visitors. By redirecting your social media traffic to your website, Scoop.it will also help you generate more qualified traffic and leads from your curation work.

Distributing your curated content through a newsletter is a great way to nurture and engage your email subscribers will developing your traffic and visibility.
Creating engaging newsletters with your curated content is really easy.